gift and detachment

Detachment does not mean not loving; it means loving well. We love if we learn, little by little, not to use another as an instrument for getting-my-own-way. I love the natural world by relating to it with reverence and courtesy. I love both people and things by leaving about them an area of peace and space in which they can be themselves, without forcing and cutting them into my own shape and size.

Miriam Pollard

bumper crop

pw results were released last thursday...i felt nervous for my own classes...believing i assessed them fairly and hoping everything will best reflect the effort we put in. it was one of the toughest years for me, preparing to leave yet determined to do my best for my final batch. i remembered having mentored them through every stage of the research process...their ideas bouncing off mine and me on one occasion hopping from one table to another, balancing 6-7 topics ranging from obesity to disability to undergarments (!), forensic science and stairways in my mind. i tasted madness.
and yes, they did it! with more than half bagging distinctions for their sheer energy, heart & hard work. it was a proud moment for me when their sms-es started streaming in, detailing their grades and how they felt. i was most most heartened by their gratitude. s17 called and screamed so loud my phone almost went bust. a few who did not manage to get a distinction also texted me a note to say thank-you. these are the ones i'll always remember in a special way...letting me know that at the end of the day, i've done my share and they too have grown, learning to look at life beyond grades.

i still think there are many ways to make this rich subject less of a chore for both tutor and students. however on the point of pw, this sustains me - to be a witness of their own growing love and respect for research and knowledge, to marvel at everyday phenomena and to unpack social theories to understand life at large and sometimes, beneath a microscope. not forgetting, working and learning to live with people of diverse quirks and background.

i would be lying if i do not admit that teachers do appreciate the gratitude their students show. it reminds us that our work goes beyond helping them obtain an "A." it was thus strange that only 2 students from my own form class texted back, at least to update me about their grades. the rest fell silent. that is life, sometimes.

i am moving to another stage where i'll tell myself to give the best in class regardless of the response received. it's a bonus if an affirmation comes my way. if not, life goes on and the quiet mission remains.

lost lives

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

---------------------------------------

a friend introduced me to declan galbraith, this english boy-singer who was only eight when this clip was recorded. the song was danny-boy, one of the first irish songs i learnt for music class back in assumption primary school. the tune brought back pictures of my childhood...here with blackie and many years later as an undergrad with bobby. these two dogs of mine grew up together. i remember picking them both from a litter of puppies and christianed them with my sister.
.

blackie stayed with a distant auntie and was eventually sent to the pound, without our knowledge. i remember him leaping up to greet us each year when we visited him. i was too young to question why nor see the pain the kind of decision could have inflicted upon him. blackie remembers us till the end. i live on with heavy regret that i could not be there for blackie when he died, old, forgotten and alone. images of him forcefully dragged up with wires up a truck still return to haunt me.

bob led a fuller life. he was small enough to move with us into a flat. bobby lived to a ripe old age but had to be put down because of cancer. i kept my promise this time and was with him till he breathed his last. i was 24 then, and always thought my eyes were born with no tear-ducts. i wept like a child when the vet placed his limp body in my arms. he whined in acute pain, not physical in form, and gradually fell silent when the drug took effect... i sometimes still ask if he wondered why he was allowed to die...even as he breathed his last.

with age and maturity, we grow to confront wider concerns and different kinds of death or injustice that surround us. sung by the same boy, this second song throws me into present time, and bullets my conscience with its final lines. my early affinity with my pets leads me to a different terrain altogether. whoever said childhood is devoid of pain must be blind. those who preach about moral gaps in today's world without a sense of their own may falter or fail. i bear no neat answers to the questions posed by the boy. still, there is a voice inside him that draws me home to that first gaze when God bends down and hears this prayer- our heartsongs about a our lost & secret past entwined with stories of other lives, received and reclaimed.

-------------------------
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath elsewhere its setting...
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

william wordsworth: intimations

to michael cheong

mike and i first met during our first year at nus. we joined the catholic students' society (css)...ran for office and bonded as heads of our respective faculties, part of the wider ex-co css family. he served as faculty head for engineering and i led the arts catholic family. we formed a loyal friendship with edward (medicine) and louis (law), and spent our days debating much on vatican II, why women can't join the priesthood, contraception, and wondered if the gift of tongues may be another form of hyped and organised hysteria afterall. in many ways, i think we helped each other to locate spaces within our own prayer life to accomodate the sort of disparities that can confront a thinking christian in attempts to understand the role of the church, the centrality of christ and a web of ethics that argue what it means to live out God's promises in life. amid the necessary mess, i found a safe space with 3 of my brothers who allowed me to be the way i am even as i try to understand their own worldview and faith experiences in light of our common humanity.way beyond theology, dogma and doctrine, the four of us grew to form a deep kinship that is to last for many years down the road. back in our nus days, we did the usual stuff undergrads dabbled together; organised retreats, planned talks, led in prayer, stayed over in each others' place, shared by breakwaters, took long rides in louis' car and feasted on the good food we enjoyed. we grappled with our fair share of heartbreaks...ennui... crisis...and coping with exam blues. louis is married and remains in law. i continue my journey as a teacher. edward has left his career as a doctor and will soon fly to rome to train for the carmelite priesthood (http://www.ocdcarmelites.org/). i still remember the shock we received when mike seemed to have left his old life, family and friends all of a sudden one november morning, packed his bags and joined the verbum dei order.(http://www.verbumdeisingapore.org/). after months of quiet discernment on his own. we kept in touch over the years. visited michael once in cebu where he was doing his noviatiate. after more than 6 years in formation , mike has finally been ordained as deacon, one step more to priesthood, if he decides to journey on. he sent us a youtube recording of his ordination recently, in the philippines where he resides. many past scenes from our journeys welled up within when i saw this clip. he remains the same mike we have come to love him for; a humble and gentle man of simplicity whose very life is rooted in the same love that jesus placed in him.
though we no longer meet nor communicate as often as we do, the winding songs of our shared journey remains deeply etched in my mind. and reality bites, knowing we now have different sets of friends and work on different priorities in our lives. i feel a sense of distant warmth even as i pen these words; happy for his journey yet knowing somehow our lives may never cross again due to our separate missions today.


mike once strummed a song to me with white alf in his arms. i was went through a bad patch then. his childlike view of the world, and our faith never leaves its mark on me.

i miss my friend and brother when evening falls. i light a candle for michael, in thanksgiving and in prayer to accompany him, and his vocation...a missionary for christ on life's road.

council campaigns

time for the elects to garner the votes they need to find a place in the 28th students' council. these campaign posters spill across the floors and walls around college. i'm spellbound by some of them. these are some of my favourites. their friends even carry self-made promo stickers designed by their elect-mates, paste them on their uniforms and attend lects, tutorials and eat in the canteen, then stroll about between lessons...canvassing for votes...they are hardly disturbed by the added and endorsed accessories on their bodies. and the institution in sporting spirit, warmly encourages this tide of festive spread. i don't remember investing so much creative juice during my days. these are the memorable sparks that make a day in school worth the journey taken. beyond the rigours of getting them to meet pi deadlines and drumming an intellectual framework to project work, i do remind myself daily in class that my students have other lives and personas of their own...to imagine, grow and lead. i think they appreciate that extra and sincere query you make before lesson starts, how their campaigning has been and the support they have been receiving from their CT classes...i try to do my part too...

about 8% of my students are running for council this year. it's exciting to see another side to their motivated selves conceptualising new angles and mediums to share another side to what makes them glow & tick...

they say serving in council is about serving the student body at large...i marvel at the 101 ways to how that mantra has been interpreted time and time again in bright colours and nuances in tone & persuasion.

who would you vote for, just by looking at the posters alone?

preview

from a email sent out to some close friends recently, who shared a gift for my birthday... i have been collating various nooks and designs to conceptualise what my own place can become. yeap..i got it !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear friends,

thank you for the bdae gift you shared for me. this jacket is super-cool and snug (even though many of you have yet to see it!). it shall follow me thru' many seasons in the years ahead...sorry the note comes late. alas, the cash has finally come in but peter is able to process everything, in infinite patience and quiet wonder. still, your generosity will remain for all eternity.

i have also fulfilled a once-distant dream; a humble 21th floor 4 year and 4 room hdb resale along bukit batok west. it is opp the driving centre and overlooks some hills in johor, much of the western countryside and a tinge of Jurong port. best of all, every window looks out to different shades of night and day cast on a far horizon. one window peeks above a brief canopy of trees...just as i imagined from many vague dreams in childhood.

you will soon be consulted in the refurbishment of this place and i promise to make it a warm and open lodge to welcome all. thank you for sharing my hopes in the different chapters of our friendship, some of you, stretching to almost 20 years. may God continue to help us experience more laughter, healthy abandonment and sure hope in all things good to come our way...

+

New Testament Greek speaks of believing 'into' rather than believing 'in'. In English, we can convey the distinction best by using either 'in' or no preposition at all.

Believing in God is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on my life than believing in Freud's method of interpreting dreams or that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realisation than a relationship. It doesn't leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you. We believe in God one reason or another we choose to believe so. We believe God when somehow we run into God in a way that by and large leaves us no choice to do otherwise. When Jesus says whoever believes 'into' him shall never die, he does not mean that to be willing to sign your name to the nicene creed guarantees eternal life. Eternal life is not the result of believing in. It is the experience of believing. . .

and finding, at last, a place to call my own

adapted from frederick buechner

Okuribito by Yōjirō Takita

"there is a stone we picked by the riverbed. it tells the story we cannot quite complete nor understand. i recover these tears when i kneel to touch your face. with hands unfolding, the cloth of my song now speaks your name."




i've my record of 'greats' in over 500 films seen in more than a decade...forrest...shawshank...cider house...eighth day... it has been awhile since another piece achieves that rare, quiet & complete stature or greatness on screen, for me.


wife, husband, partner, parent, friend, alone or with a newfound stranger...go watch this. i won't say more... it is good that even words fail me.

tree; writings

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.-

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,

We fell them down and turn them into paper,

That we may record our emptiness.

Kahlil Gibran

superfriends in 224-B

i used to rush home from school...finish my homework (and sometimes writing lines!) in time to catch this series. it was a hit in the 80s. i lived inside keat hong village, in a kampong off choa chu kang. that was my unit address. finding this again on utube shocks & delights me.

dad will be burning bonfires at the backyard to repel the mossies. mom dishing up food at the kitchen. sis will be busy marking. my dogs, brownie and blackie will be near me. the series played...'tacky' wasn't part of my vocabulary then. and i was happy. picture courtesy of pchew-nostalgia.blogspot.com/2008/09/kampong-...i hope to find time to scan and upload some of my past one day...

knowing death

"Dont worry about dying - that will happen successfully

whether you worry about it or not"

quoted from a buddhist monk

i am in touch with a former student whose loved one is being given palliative care for cancer. he rests in assisi hospice, a special place i used to visit during my undergrad days and shared carols with the patients there. all have passed away but their smiles and presence remain, among the familiar and homely corners that are there. reading his open account (http://shadyz09.livejournal.com/) moved me. i too, am suddenly reminded of the many sudden deaths that marked my childhood and some stages of my adult life. beyond the people who died, this encounter was marked by countless visits to funeral parlours, crematoriums, cemeteries and once, even a morgue.

i learn to experience death even before i go. to me, that is a privilege that saddens, humbles but also frees me tremendously. over the years as a teacher, be it for lit or gp, i also conducted learning journeys to these resting places, perhaps a subconscious desire to help my students confront and befriend an inevitable part of life whom none can escape. i remember one particular trip where we stood, silenced by the sight of a simple a balloon above the gravestone of a child. it read- 'happy bdae, son.' often, to the uninformed, there is more fear than peace when it comes to the thought of death. death seems to sever all ties with the living. the pain of leaving our loved ones behind imparts a deep anguish that cannot be put in words.

on the other hand, it also makes us want to live life more intensely, grateful for every waking moment; be it a walk up a flight of stairs, sharing a great meal with people or simply, trying to capture rain, through art or photography. i experience my fitness, my vision and my imagination in these moments, convinced of my spirituality as a person, capable of every emotion that makes me reflect, think and feel. when every degree / work has been gained, all salaries spent and all loves expressed...this final stage and some say, 'takeoff' , leaves us in wonder, for more...we want to see what lies behind the veil of our existence...our soul against an open sky...tinted in blue rarefied air; a canvas inscribed with a promise, that very dream that lays waste will become whole again. and our joy, will be complete.

rainlight's home

When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you...meanwhile, we are enlarged in that waiting. We, of course don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful, our expectancy...

adapted: sharon cotner's comfort prayers

saw my final unit today. i made a commitment to it. a 21th floor apartment that overlooks all of west, much of malaysia, and the faint lighted seas of jurong port. within budget. this picture is an inaccurate figment of its real and humble form. but it fits snugly into my heart. that is all that matters. after viewing 12, 13 units for so, this is it.... it was raining when i viewed the flat with some close friends and family today. i saw rain streaking past the high windows, resembling the unlikely fall of snow. once a fantasy, now, not quite believing. our God blesses a longheld dream. it is coming true.

a route outside school

they were preparing for assembly. and they really sang- the national and college anthems, though the latter was much more audible in form and conviction. each of them will pass through these gates and we hope they do become hope for a better age.

even as footsteps lighten and noise dies down, one does wonder if there is anything more left to impart. aren't they supposed to be self-directed, learners in their own way? sam just passed me the following lines which were inscribed on diary...it has been quite awhile since another quote, in an instant, inspires a silence within that defers quick judgement and brisk reading.

Often I have tried the frightening way of 'reality',

where the things that count are profession, law, fashion, finance.

But disillusioned and freed I fled away,

alone to the other side, the place of dreams and blessed folly.

hermann hessse

on the evening before rain-

i want to say more under this rain but you stand apart

and away.

my shadow lingers in wait

as

lamplight keeps vigil

in the night

ahead

yoda of olde, pls come home

digitalised yoda in his heydays was no match for the wise and warm puppet that he was in his later history. compare the cheap lines of the first to the thoughtful script in the second clip. the latter was filmed in the 70s with limited technology. producers had to depend on other resources to 'move' and 'embed' a scene. the latest pieces in 2000 may have prioritised the sophistry of new media over thoughtful characterisation.

i will opt for zen and sesame street over rabid CGI in film technology.

(some galactic collisions), if i did not become another 'cher

we live parallel lives. some of these best scenes from star wars still enter in my waking dreams. was eight, nine or ten when i watched them. every boy then (now?) dreamt of piloting any of these starships, and volunteer for a battle scene. i have been clinging on to these galactic aspirations more than fifteen times since. i think i will take them to my grave... relive them amid a quantum of stars... nebulas... swirling in my elliptical heaven.

hail to lucas and the star wars trilogy...

life calling

LET SOMETHING ESSENTIAL HAPPEN TO ME
=======================================
O God,
Let something essential happen to me,
something more than interesting
or entertaining,
or thoughtful.


O God,
Let something essential happen to me,
something awesome,
something real.
Speak to my condition Lord,
and change me somewhere inside where it matters,
a change that will burn and tremble and heal
and explode me into tears
or laughter
or love that throbs or screams
or keeps a terrible, cleansing silence
and dares the dangerous deeds...


Let something happen in me
which is my real self.
O God,
let something essential and passionate happen in me now.
Strip me of my illusions of self-sufficiency,
of my proud sophistications,
of my inflated assumptions of knowledge
and leave me shivering as Adam or Eve before the miracle of the natural -
the miracle of this earth
that nurtures me as a mother
and delights me as a lover;

the miracle of my body
that breathes and moves,
hungers and digests,
sees and hears,
that is creased and wrinkled and sexual,
shrinks in hurt,

and swells in pleasure;
that works by the most amazing messages
of what and when and how,
coded and curled in every
cell and that dares to speak the confronting
word.
O God,
Let something essential and joyful happen in me now.

Something like the blooming of hope and faith,
like a grateful heart,
like a surge of awareness
of how precious each moment is,
that now, not next time,
now is the occasion
to take off my shoes,
to see every bush fire,
to leap and whirl with neighbour,
to gulp the air as sweet as
wine
until I've drunk enough
to dare to speak the tender word:

"Thank you"
"I love you"
"You're beautiful";
"Let's live forever beginning now";
and "I'm a fool for Christ's
sake."

- Ted Loder

as it is, as they are

i enjoy listening to mandarin songs even though my grades in the same language were nothing to be proud of. over these years, many songs have remained with me. they come back when i least expect it...on a long ride home, in the pool, reading at night, the rare day in a ktv pub... the quiet road tracing a journey's end.
half the time i do not always capture the full meaning of their lyrics. in my simplicity or rudimentary understanding (and sometimes with the patience and help of great bilingual friends), i receive a glimpse into the beauty of this language...i am no linguist but i feel some of these chinese songs capture & express a range of human experiences that find no equivalent to the types you hear in english songs (maybe except those sung in the 80s...then again, i am obviously biased). the phrasings and poetic nuances in some pieces express a depth that english cannot penetrate, let alone translate.
it's best to receive them as they are. again, i don't always understand what is written but it's sufficient to note i feel a tacit grasp for what they wanted to say...there's a story to this one. never has the theme of change been sung with so much loss, anger and anguish.




this piece is by kit chan. i heard her live, once in nus. the sound system went off but still she soared, her voice lifting the day. we came close to heaven.